The Brief

Orange County officials are taking control of services at the county’s signature mental health campus, a move that pushes out a nonprofit organization that was paid tens of millions of dollars in public funds to run it for the last two years.

The action terminates a three-year contract early and comes after a damning audit found the organization, Mind OC, failed to ensure proper staffing and effective outcomes of key services.

LAist obtained the audit, which has not been previously reported, through a public records request. It's the first audit of Mind OC’s management of the mental health campus — which began in October 2022. To date, the county has paid the nonprofit more than $38 million to manage services at the campus, according to county records.

Those services include substance abuse treatment and mental health crisis programs. The campus, located in the city of Orange, served some 3,500 people in fiscal year 2023-2024, according to data provided by the O.C. Health Care Agency.

The public-private effort was created pre-pandemic as county officials came under increasing pressure to deal with a very public homelessness emergency and high-profile incidents involving people experiencing mental health crises. The goal was to create mental health hubs where, regardless of your insurance status, people can find treatment.

The shift in operations at Be Well's Orange campus marks the second time the county has lost confidence in a contractor hired to execute their plan. The previous change in 2022 shut down substance abuse treatment services at the Orange campus for more than a year.

County officials say a change was needed

Veronica Kelley, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, told LAist that the contract with Mind OC to run the campus will end Sept. 30. "What we don't want to do is continue down a road that we know is not going well," she said.

Kelley said that Mind OC did not meet its contract obligations to bring in funding from private insurance or other private revenue to help offset the cost of taxpayer-funded services. She also said it was costing the county twice as much to pay the nonprofit to run the campus as it would for the county to run it themselves.

"We have switched back to a model that we know works so that it is more efficient and that we can ensure directly that services are being provided in an effective and regulatory required manner," she said.

A spokesperson for Mind OC said the nonprofit has a meeting scheduled with county leaders on Wednesday and declined to make anyone available for an interview until after that meeting takes place. Their three-year contract to run the Orange campus had been set to run through next June.

Mind OC will continue in a more limited role at the Be Well campus in Orange, managing the physical property, according to a joint statement released Tuesday by Kelley and Mind OC CEO Phil Franks. Mind OC also has another lucrative county contract to run an even bigger mental health campus being built in Irvine.

The county health care agency intends to continue working with the onsite subcontractors, Exodus Recovery Inc. and HealthRIGHT 360, "to ensure continued high quality psychiatric crisis and substance use disorder services," according to the news release issued late Tuesday after questions from LAist.

Audit flags lack of training, questionable billing

An audit report from July and subsequent memo from Kelley to the O.C. Board of Supervisors notes 38 problems with Mind OC's management of Be Well’s Orange campus including concerns that lack of oversight could have led to “possible fraud.”

Kelley told LAist that the possibility of fraud was under investigation, and no conclusions had been reached.

Among the issues flagged in the audit:

• Inadequate staffing of crisis programs, which are run by subcontractor Exodus Recovery Inc. The audit notes "numerous occasions" of unanswered calls or instances where calls were rerouted to a call center in Los Angeles. 
• Duplicative billing for residential treatment claims by subcontractor HealthRight360. The audit also notes Mind OC's lack of "consistent and independent monitoring" of HealthRight360 to ensure appropriate billing.
• Failure to ensure subcontractor HealthRight360 provided appropriate services and procedures for treating substance use disorders. 
• No evidence that HealthRight360 employees completed the county's required annual trainings, including on substance withdrawal management. 
• No evidence that mental health providers at the campus followed up with clients after discharge to prevent relapses and link them to continued care.
• Failure to meet the goal of having 26% of the campus' services paid for via private insurance. Currently, according to the audit, revenue from private insurance makes up just 2.6% of the total, meaning public dollars are paying for the remainder.
• Failure to meet the goal, laid out in Mind OC's contract, to refer 95% of clients in the crisis residential program to a lower level of care. Only about half of these clients have been discharged to a lower level of care, according to the audit. 

In Kelley's memo to supervisors about the audit, dated Aug. 15, she wrote that she had taken a call earlier that day from Phillip Franks, Mind OC's CEO, who told her the subcontractor HealthRight360 "was 'not going to make it'” citing billing issues, poor staffing and poor quality of care.

"All of this should have been addressed and known about if [Mind OC] was fulfilling the requirements of the [contract]," Kelley wrote to the supervisors.

Kelley told LAist that following the audit’s findings in July, Mind OC submitted a corrective action plan to the county. She said the county was ending its contract with Mind OC for "convenience," not "for cause."

Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, told LAist that she believed most of the problems flagged in the audit were the result of her organization having to work through Mind OC as an intermediary, instead of working directly with the county, as it does with other public agencies across the state.

"It's an extremely unusual relationship," she said of MindOC's role on the Be Well campus.

HealthRIGHT 360 began operating for the first time in O.C., on the Be Well campus, in December 2023. Eisen said, as a new provider in the county, they've had numerous questions about documentation and billing that would have been more easily answered by county health officials, but "we have to go to MindOC with questions," she said.

LAist reached out to Exodus Recovery Inc. by phone and will update this story if we hear back.

A homeless encampment in Santa Ana's Civic Center Plaza. The encampment was cleared in 2018 as a federal judge and others put pressure on the county to do more to help unhoused people.

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The backstory

Mind OC, which does business as Be Well OC, was launched in 2017 with the goal of creating several mental health hubs in Orange County funded through both public funds and private health insurance. The organization has had strong support from the O.C. Board of Supervisors, including Supervisor Andrew Do, who helped craft the concept in 2015 as a member of the board's ad hoc committee on mental health services.

Prior to the formation of Mind OC, county officials faced scrutiny from a federal judge for failing to provide adequate mental health services for unhoused people, and failing to fully spend mental health dollars in the county.

Mind OC, and the Be Well campus, which opened in Orange in 2021 as a public-private partnership, were meant to address those problems. Initially, Kelley said, the county ran the Orange campus, and Mind OC managed the property and security. Then, in October 2022, the county signed a contract with Mind OC to oversee all operations and subcontractors at the Be Well campus.

The following year, county health officials raised concerns about the campus' substance abuse treatment contractor Telecare Corp.

Shortly after those concerns were raised, the county shuttered Be Well's residential treatment program, run by Telecare, for more than a year until the county could find a new contractor.

HealthRIGHT 360 took over. The most recent audit from July found similar problems remain — for example, failing to provide required services and needed follow-up with clients after they're discharged.

This past June, the O.C. Board of Supervisors entered into another contract with Mind O.C. to build an even bigger mental health campus — 22 acres — in Irvine. The board approved $40 million in federal pandemic response money for the construction, and at least another $66 million has been provided through state and federal funds.

Kelley said the county's recent decision to cancel its contract with Mind OC only applies to its contract to manage Be Well's campus in Orange.

She also said the contract cancellation would not affect the separate contracts Mind OC has with O.C. cities to handle psychiatric and drug emergencies in lieu of armed police officers.

A volunteer with Wound Walk OC takes the vital signs of a man sleeping in an underpass in central Orange County.

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Responses to the audit and contract termination

Michael Sean Wright, who runs the street medicine group Wound Walk OC and was briefed on the audit and contract termination by LAist, said it showed county officials hadn’t learned from the past.

He pointed back to a 2022 audit that revealed problems with Telecare's operations on the Be Well campus.

"We gave an additional millions of millions of millions of dollars and allowed the same lack of oversight to continue. Mind OC stayed with the keys and the checks," Wright said.

He added that despite Be Well's original promise of expanded substance abuse treatment services in O.C., it's still difficult to find detox and substance abuse programs for people who want them, many of whom are unhoused.

"Time is of the essence," he said. "There is no place that will take you at night."

Supervisor Katrina Foley said the county's decision to take over management of the Be Well campus from Mind OC was part of the "trial and error" that has come along with the county’s efforts to get mental health care to anyone who needs it, regardless of insurance.

"If something isn't working, we have to be willing to pivot quickly in this dynamic environment," she said.

"Making sure that people are trained and in compliance with rules and regulations and systems … that is something that the county behavioral health staff can do maybe better than a private nonprofit," Foley said.

Foley said the county had made "tremendous progress" since the time, in 2016 and 2017, when large encampments clogged the courthouse plaza in Santa Ana and stretched for miles along the Santa Ana riverbed. At the time, many residents in those encampments said they had untreated substance abuse and other mental health problems.

Per a court settlement, the encampments were cleared in 2018 in exchange for the county and O.C. cities agreeing to build more shelters and permanent supportive housing, and agreeing to connect unhoused people with mental health treatment.

"I'm actually very proud of the work that our county staff have done to build out the system of care, but it's an evolving process," she said. "We want to get this right before we complete building the much bigger [Be Well] campus in Irvine," she said.

NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match. It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.

It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details. But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches.

Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded. This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating.

"Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.

The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.

Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles.

"There's a different energy coming out of it," he said. "Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."

The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet. This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company. It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.

This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades. Last month, FIFA announced that starting in 2031, U.S.-based Fanatics will be the official supplier of FIFA soccer cards, trading cards and stickers.

On a recent afternoon in Central Park, Sanchez met up with other collectors. Hunched over stacks of stickers, some two dozen people inspected the offerings with laser focus.

With only four stickers missing, Sanchez was already looking forward to earning bragging rights as the first person in his family across the finish line this year.

" I'm feeling pretty accomplished," he said. "I've been trying to get a win, and this is gonna be a huge win for me."

An expensive, labor-intensive but rewarding hobby

A single pack of seven stickers — available online, at corner stores or drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS — now cost $2, compared to four years ago when five stickers retailed for around $1. That means simply buying enough packs to accumulate 980 stickers would total $280.

Given the costs, finishing the book is rarely a solitary pursuit, and aficionados often meet up to spread the wealth, according to Crista Latvis, 26, who organized the recent sticker swap in Central Park.

"You can't just buy your way into it," she said. "Otherwise,  it's super expensive and you've got to be very lucky."

For many, these gatherings are part of the pastime's draw.

"It's great to meet other people who are also doing it and also excited for the World Cup, especially since it's here," Latvis said.

Sebastian Clavijo, who attended Latvis' swap, said he spent tens of thousands of dollars on his quest this year. Clavijo, 32, has been collecting Panini stickers since he was 4. This year, his goal is to complete the book only with pieces featuring red and purple borders — an even rarer get.

" I just like soccer and I love collecting," he said. "That's my hobby, you know?"

In 2022, Panini introduced stickers with different colored borders that vary in rarity. That element has been an especially big hit with the trading card community and contributed to the hobby's appeal in the U.S., according to Howarth from Panini America.

Panini popularity has grown along with soccer

Demand has always existed in New York, Texas, Florida, among other big states, but it's also emerging nationwide, in places like Phoenix and the Northwest, according to Howarth.

" As soccer has grown, so has Panini," he said.

Howarth believes part of this year's popularity stems from the expanded World Cup format. Teams that have never qualified for the tournament — and therefore never been sticker-fied by Panini — are finally getting their moment.

For some, completing the sticker album is driven by nostalgia for their childhood, family or home country.

Linda Lino never heard of the hobby until she was 18, and her grandmother gave her a Panini sticker book. That was in 2014. Lino has completed every World Cup edition since, in part in memory of her late grandmother.

"It started with my grandma and then it became like a whole family thing," Lino said. "I love the community that it brings together."

That's especially true with her father, who never had the chance to collect stickers when he was a kid in Peru, Lino said. Now, the two are making up for lost time.

"My dad is so excited," she said. "He's like 'I want to help you. I want to put the stickers together.'"

Clemente Lisi, a sports journalist who has written about the Panini sticker phenomenon, said the sticker album serves as a time capsule for the World Cup. With the tournament's return to the U.S. after 32 years, he expects it will produce more first-time collectors looking for a way to remember this summer.

"This may be the only tangible thing from a World Cup unless you go to a game," he said.

Lisi, who also runs Planet Soccer on Substack, anticipates that the U.S. company Fanatics will further cater to the market at home.

" It'll even become more American and more baked into our culture," he said.

Sanchez, the college student from Astoria, dabbles in collecting other items, like vinyls and trading cards. But what he appreciates most about the Panini sticker scene is its supportive and rarely competitive nature.

" The community around the World Cup stickers is something like I've never seen before," he said. "The community is just so nice."

After countless hours of trading and visiting multiple convenience stores, Sanchez found his 980th and final sticker at the swap in Central Park. It was of the Iraqi team. He let out a gasp, followed by a smile that spanned ear to ear. "Let's goooo!"

With a mountain of duplicates left, Sanchez wasn't ready to move on just yet. His next step was to help his mother finish her album.

" I'm going to take a break," he said. "I'm going to celebrate today and then get back to it."

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.